Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Algernon Charles Swinburne 18371909On the Monument Erected to Mazzini at Genoa
SwinburnI
Mother divine,
Of all that serv’d thee best with sword or pen,
All sons of thine,
Before thee stands:
The head most high, the heart found faithfulest,
The purest hands.
The soul, we know,
Now sits on high where Alighieri sits
With Angelo.
Enough to say
What this man was, whose praise no thought may reach,
No words can weigh.
Her first-born son,
Such grace befell not ever man on earth
As crowns this One.
That he could give
Life back to her who gave him, that his dead
Mother might live.
With fast-seal’d eyes,
And bade the dead rise up and live again,
And she did rise:
But dark with strife,
Like heaven’s own sun that storming clouds bedim,
Was all his life.
Have had their span
Of time to hurt and are not: He is here
The sunlike man.
For sovereign son,
Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst
This mightier One.
Lives and is free,
As with controlling breath and sovereign hand
He bade her be.
That crown her fame:
But highest of all that heaven and earth behold
Mazzini’s name.